


Love Is A Free Washer/Dryer

by todisturbtheuniverse



Series: Northern Lights Farm [4]
Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Laundry, somewhat canon-divergent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-08-03 05:02:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16319642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/todisturbtheuniverse/pseuds/todisturbtheuniverse
Summary: This is a story about laundry.Farm life doesn't come ready-made with modern conveniences, but Lydia's laundry situation evolves over the years. Strangely, every step of the way seems to mark a milestone in her relationship with Shane.





	Love Is A Free Washer/Dryer

When Lydia had lived in the city, when she’d worked at Joja, she’d carted a Ziploc bag of quarters up and down six flights of stairs to do her laundry—packing the machine as full as she could, making those two dollars stretch, and who cared if some of her towels ended up with weird splotches of color on them from being mixed with the wrong stuff? No one was looking at her towels. She worked too much to have people over, anyway.

She worked too much to have _people_.

And then, the move—to a ramshackle little cottage where she was lucky that the plumbing wasn’t in such bad shape. Robin told her so, anyway, upon initial inspection, and Lydia, knowing exactly nothing about pipes except to pour some Drano down them occasionally, had to take her word for it. Robin didn't charge her anything, and if she was trying to rip Lydia off, she'd have done that, right?

She washed her underwear in the sink when it was too dark to keep clearing the land or planting or watering or fertilizing or or or—and she leaned against the countertop to stay upright by the light of the single lamp. Her eyes were always at risk of closing. She'd woken up in the middle of the night on the floor more than once, freezing. Never bruised, so clearly some part of her had made a decision to lie down instead of another part of her making a decision to _fall_ down. Her wardrobe had been replaced: jeans and flannels and t-shirts to match the new lifestyle, the old "sensible" high heels and pencil skirts and satin blouses left behind at her dad's. These new things could survive soaking in the ancient claw-foot tub and then being hung to dry on the line behind her house when the sun was hot enough.

There were no neighbors to see her kangaroo-patterned underwear flapping in the breeze.

Well, there was one neighbor. By some stretch of the word.

"Hey," Shane said, his voice a little gravelly and resentful. "Marnie asked me to deliver your new chicken."

His eyes were squinted up and red-rimmed in the bright summer sunshine. She felt a little red-rimmed herself, mostly from staying up until one in the morning to hang her laundry out on the lines before collapsing in bed. No big deal, she’d thought. No one would come by and see all her unmentionables.

She’d entirely forgotten the chicken.

Best to just forget the underwear, too. Either he’d look over to the left and see them, or he wouldn’t. He was rude, but probably not rude enough to comment on her choice of patterns.

"Perfect, thanks," she said, trying for brisk. "You think she'd like the coop better today? Or, I built an enclosure around it, you know, so she can be outside—too much, too early? What do you think?"

He gave her a somewhat-blank, somewhat-bemused stare. A feathered head with a particularly beady eye poked out of the basket to do the same.

"Let her loose outside and see what she does," he said, holding the basket out to her.

She made a few calculations. Saturday mornings were not the best time to push him; Friday nights were some of his worst, and the mood seemed to linger into the weekend. There was still the faint hint of beer lingering around him, and it was hard to tell if it was leftover from last night or if he'd started early this morning.

Well. What was life without a little risk? The things he'd said at the dock just a couple of weeks ago lingered in the back of her mind, and the last thing she wanted was to allow him to swiftly retreat back to the ranch and a six-pack.

Besides. She liked him, rude or not. She’d seen the suggestion of a dry humor during a couple of their previous conversations, and she wanted to see more of it.

"Let's head over to the coop, then," she suggested, pretending as if she hadn't noticed the attempt to offload the basket.

His eyes narrowed, just a little more, and as she brushed past him on the stairs she held her breath—bracing for a rude outburst, ready to take the basket he would undoubtedly thrust into her arms before storming off. But as she passed him, he let out an exasperated sigh, and his footsteps clunked on the stairs as he followed.

She was so smug in her victory that it came as a nasty shock when he commented, "Laundry day, huh?"

She glanced back in time to see him look away from the laundry lines—from the towels and the jeans and the t-shirts and, yes, the underwear. Had he seen the kangaroos? Could you make them out at this distance? She didn't dare look that way to be sure; her face was red enough as it was. She could pass that off as a sunburn, probably. She'd only learned the hard way, and recently, to be religious about sunscreen.

"Yeah," she said, making a stab at staying casual. "Best day of the week, right?"

"No dryer? Or are you just really trying to embrace the country lifestyle?"

There was a jab in there somewhere; she ignored it.

"No washer, no dryer," she said. "Guess Granddad did things the old-fashioned way."

They were on the path through a stand of pine trees, now, and the laundry was out of sight. She barely withheld a sigh of relief.

"Why?" she continued. "Is this how you're supposed to do things, out in the country? Am I doing it right?"

She smiled at him, so wide-eyed and guileless that he snorted in reaction. Maybe he was just laughing _at_ her, the weird wannabe farm girl who wouldn't stop saying hello to him on the street no matter how many times he tried to put her off, but it was some version of a laugh.

"That why you're raising chickens now?" he said. "Trying to do things right?"

"I'm always trying to do things right," she said, knee-jerk, her mouth running ahead as fast as her brain could propel it. " _Trying_ being the operative word."

He didn't laugh. Despite the lingering scent of beer, he gave her a considering, sidelong look. She pretended not to see it.

 

* * *

 

 

"Hey, Marnie’s decided to replace her old washer/dryer," Shane said, one night that first fall when he was fifteen days sober.

They were sitting by the big pond on her property, legs stretched out toward the campfire, backs braced against a sturdy log they'd hauled over just a week or so ago, and he looked both better and worse than she’d ever seen him look: better for the aggressive water-guzzling, worse for the hunted look in his eyes that said a beer would go down real nice right now. Better, but haggard for it, too.

He reached for another one of the lopsided pepper poppers. She had a ways to go for presentation, but clearly, they tasted good. She felt a swell of pride for that. That he liked anything she'd offered him—that was still new enough to delight her.

And that he broke a silence first, sometimes. That he sought her out instead of the other way around. That he'd spent today, a Saturday, his day off, helping her convince her new cow to follow her home from Marnie's ranch. That he'd laughed when they were both braced against the cow's backside, pushing, and she'd sworn reflexively like a violent sneeze when her feet slipped in the mud and he'd caught her by the elbow and hauled her back up and she'd felt a jolt in her chest like—

She stuck another marshmallow on her marshmallow-stick and held it out over the fire, firmly ignoring the dumb list-making that her brain did when it had a crush.

"That right?" she said, refocusing.

He kept a wary eye on her roasting marshmallow. "The dryer doesn’t dry so great." He pulled a face. "I mean, it’s slow as hell. Thirty years old and all. But it works. You want ‘em?"

She turned the marshmallow. It was really hard to ignore the crush when the crush remembered something that caused you an inconvenience and offered to fix it. She did her best, even though her heart beat a bit faster at the idea of a dryer. Even a thirty-year-old dryer.

"How much?" she asked. "I could really use them, but—"

"Lydia," he said, a stamp of exasperation—completely, totally familiar—imprinted on her name. It was how he usually said her name, but it had shifted over the last few months from aggravated exasperation to fond exasperation, and yes, there was totally a measurable difference. "They’re thirty fucking years old. They’re free."

Her eyes stung. She didn't dare blink; it would dislodge the completely excessive tears. She could pass off the glassiness in her eyes as the heat from the fire. Maybe. Hopefully.

She cleared her throat. "I’ll take them," she said. Her voice didn’t waver; that was something. "Thanks. I’ll rent a truck sometime this week—"

"You can just borrow ours," he interrupted again, and then, exasperation and fondness growing in equal measure, "You’re real bad at accepting help, huh?"

She managed a laugh. "It takes one to know one, right?"

He snorted—as good as agreement—and she started planning out how she’d get the machines hooked up, envisioning it, while Shane ate through another pepper popper and considered the pond.

"Thanks," she said again, because she thought it bore repeating.

He shrugged, shifted a little. "They're Marnie's machines."

"But you thought to offer them to me."

Was _he_ blushing? No. Impossible. The firelight was just weird. He cleared his throat.

"Just seemed like you might want to keep your kangaroos out of the snow, with winter coming, and all," he said.

For an instant she was too apoplectic with embarrassment and anger and—yes, a little amusement—to react, and then she smacked him on the shoulder. "You _looked_?!"

He leaned slightly away from her, as if that put him out of range of future smacks. "You leave them hung up on lines in broad daylight!"

"That's not an invitation to—"

"I didn't go over and _inspect_ them, or anything, just out of the corner of my eye while we were weeding—"

"Oh, I'm _sure_ it was out of the corner of your eye—"

But it was impossible to keep up, this righteous indignation, when there was a hysterical laughter bubbling inside her that burst forth before she could keep talking, and he joined in, forehead thunking down on his knees, as she clutched her stomach and tears of mirth shook free from her eyes.

She dropped the marshmallow and the marshmallow stick, of course. The whole thing got subsumed into the fire. It only made them laugh harder.

And then, without thinking, as they started to get their breath back and the laughter wound down, she leaned sideways and dropped her head down to rest against his shoulder.

For a moment, he froze. She froze. Muscles tense, confused, reacting. She could still pull away, pass it off as a brief gesture of—of camaraderie, or something, instead of cuddling—

But then he relaxed, by increments; he didn't pull away. Though their arms were slightly squashed together, he shifted, just enough to take her hand in his.

This was still friendly, right? Just perfectly friendly. Nothing untoward, here. It would be a long time before he saw her kangaroos in any context besides on the laundry lines.

But. Maybe. Someday.

 

* * *

 

 

And then it was another fall—because time in the valley passed in a peculiar way, both too fast and too slow, and years seemed to go in great dollops sometimes—and the farm was doing good. Great, even. She had money left over, money used to make additions to the cottage and renovate the old cellar. And to move the washer/dryer _inside_ , instead of huddling over it on the back porch.

This would all be wonderful, except that Lydia couldn’t actually find any of her laundry, and she knew she had plenty of it. Jeans splattered with mud. Flannels stiff with sweat. She'd looked forward to doing it _inside_ , for the first time in literal years. Still in pajamas and with freezing toes, she made her way to the back of the house and poked her head through a door that still hadn’t quite been fixed with a handle. It was on the to-do list.

"Hey, Jas," she said. "You’re not playing some fun prank on me where you hide all my dirty laundry, right?"

Jas looked up from her book, quietly indignant in the way that only a nine-year-old could be. "Vincent hasn’t been over in a week," she said, trying a very dignified voice that really exercised Lydia’s poker face, "so unless it’s been missing that long—"

"No, no, I know. You wouldn’t. I can’t find _anything_ , though."

"Maybe you already put it in the washer," Jas suggested, looking back down to her book, eyes already scanning. The first _Harry Potter_ —she was halfway through, which was much further than she’d been a few hours ago.

"I’ll go check," Lydia agreed, though she was absolutely sure she would not have forgotten putting the first glorious load of laundry into a machine that was _inside_ , "and then I’ll make some lunch, okay?"

"Can I eat in my room? I want to know what happens next."

Lydia grinned. "As long as you tell us all about what happened at dinner tonight."

Jas grinned back at her—not shy anymore. That, too, had been years ago. "Deal."

Lydia detoured back to her own bedroom for socks—the cellar got damn cold this time of year, and there was at least one fuzzy pair left in her dresser—and made the descent beneath the house. There was something a little creepy about it, always had been, but doubly so when she heard the sounds of movement below.

Halfway down the stairs, she froze. Shit, did they have _rats_ , now? Just when things were going good—

But then there was a breath and a grunt, and she relaxed. There was something about knowing someone for three years that allowed you to recognize all their sounds and mannerisms and even their silhouette at a distance in dim light, in an instant, and she didn’t know _why_ he was down in the cellar, but it was just Shane.

"Hey," she called, continuing on down the stairs, "have you seen my—"

She stopped dead at the bottom as he started and looked up at her. The whole western wall of the cellar had been cleared, the many racks of preserves jars and aging cheese shifted out of the way. Still organized, though. She could see even from here that her system had been preserved.

And in place of all of those rickety shelves were two gleaming machines that looked horrendously out of place in this early-twentieth-century-hole-underground, complete with some kind of built-in cabinets and tables in a nice honey-golden wood on which currently sat all of the clothes she was looking for, perfectly clean and nicely folded.

Shane shot her a glare over a pair of kangaroo-patterned underwear he was folding. What timing.

"If you’d given me maybe _ten_ more minutes," he grouched, "I would’ve shouted _surprise_ and everything." He sighed and ran a hand over his face, then gestured to the machines. "Tada?"

As if in slow motion, she realized: every time she’d been about to go down to the cellar these last few days, either Jas or Shane had distracted her and she’d forgotten her intentions entirely; there had been a few odd noises coming from the house when she’d been out in the field, but she’d discounted them as the wind, which was always sporadic and feisty in the valley this time of year; and her _husband_ had done her _laundry_ after assembling a _new laundry station_. That was what this was. A laundry station. A beautiful, wonderful laundry station.

Apparently she'd been quiet too long, because the exasperation on his face took on a bit of anxiety. "Don’t tell me you were attached to those old machines," he said. "The dryer took _three hours_ to dry a couple of sweaters, Lyd."

She opened her mouth to say something, found her throat stuck fast, closed her mouth again, and shook her head. That much was safe.

"I read all the labels," he added, inspecting the folded clothes with a critical eye, "if that's what you're worried about. Everything washed per care instructions. No weird splotches or shrinkages."

He was going to keep running down the list if she didn't say something, but her heart was damn near bursting in her chest, which made speaking challenging. She'd felt about as overjoyed on their wedding day. She knew that this made her kind of weird.

"You built this?" she managed, though she sounded even to herself like she was getting over some kind of sinus infection. "It looks so _nice_."

The anxiety dropped away. He gave her an understanding, if exasperated, look. "If you cry over a washing machine again—"

"I’ve never cried over a washing machine _before_ —"

"I was too polite to say anything at the pond that night," he said, now smiling in that way of his that had turned her heart for years, "but I _saw_ —"

And then he didn’t get the chance to heckle her further, because she’d used her lightning speed and superior reflexes to dart across the cellar and kiss him thoroughly, which he reciprocated with enthusiasm, hoisting her up on top of the washer (a little clumsily) and knocking a stack of underwear to the floor. She burst out laughing but kept kissing him, and after a very halfhearted attempt to pull away, he allowed the underwear to languish on the floor.

"You're so fucking weird," he mumbled against her mouth. "You know that, right? You know that nobody else gets as excited as you do about laundry?"

She cupped his face in her hands, pressed her forehead against his. "I know how many books you have about chickens," she said. Threatened, really. "I'm in good company."

And it was a testament to the kind of day he was having—to the hard-fought ground he'd gained over the years—that he rolled his eyes and grinned at her and didn't argue.

**Author's Note:**

> Might write more about these two and stick it in a series at some point.


End file.
